I loved science in high school. Let me clarify — chemistry (thanks to Mrs. Green) and A&P were my favorites. While working on my latest project and thinking of sharing it, I thought maybe I would present it like this: the anatomy of cloth and the physiology of weaving.

So anytime you look at a piece of cloth, the anatomy would be the yarn (or thread), the content it’s made of (cotton, wool, rayon, etc), and the yarn’s structure as warp and weft. The warp and weft are woven over top of each other into evenly spaced squares (in a balanced plain weave) or sometimes over a few threads and under a few more in uneven numbers (resulting in twill patterns, overshots, and wide variety of other intricate looking designs). If you’re not sure which part of the cloth is warp or weft, well. I’m going to show you. At least, I’ll try to show you.

**Now, I feel like I need to make a disclaimer here. I like to weave. It’s fun and rewarding. I’m an okay weaver. There are people who have far more experience than I do; and there are those with less experience and more natural ability than I do. I am not a professional and I have no misgivings that I know everything there is to know about weaving. I learn something new all the time! Really, I just want to show folks some basics on weaving. It isn’t hard or complicated. Often, I think of it more as… intricate. Sometimes tedious. But it’s not hard. And in case you ever thought about learning, hopefully my novice hands can help encourage you!**

Back to the weaving.

Now that we covered a little anatomy of cloth, let’s look at the physiology of weaving. It all starts with the warp.

Did you ever make a friendship bracelet? Remember those long threads you measured out and tied to a stationary object before you started to make knots in them? This is similar (but also different). The warp is the long threads that get tied to a stationary object (the back beam of a loom) and then wound onto a loom to slowly unroll as you weave the weft yarn from side to side, over and under.

When you design a weaving project, you have to decide what you want to make, what kind of structure you want it to have, what type of yarn to use, and how long you need the finished project to be. Depending on the type of cloth you want and if you want it to have a lot of drape or be stiffly structured, you will decide how many threads of yarn you need to have in every inch of the width of the product. That seems really wordy and complicated, but it isn’t. For a simple over and under, plain woven fabric, you can set the cloth to have 18 threads per inch for a bit of drape or you can set it at 24 threads per inch and have a denser fabric because you’re squeezing more yarn together side-by-side in the same width. This is generic because that count depends on the size of the yarn, but it’s just one of the things you have to decide on.

For this project, I am making a new set of dishtowels in 8/2 cotton. I needed 6 yards of length of each individual thread that goes into the warp and I wanted to set them at 18 ends (or threads) per inch. My weaving width is 26″, so I had to wind 468, 6-yard pieces of thread. I also had to wind them in the right color order to put them directly onto the back beam.

Depending on the type of loom a person has, the warping process varies a bit. My loom has what is called a sectional beam in the back. It has pegs every two inches (as seen in the pictures below) that the warp gets wound into. If you don’t have these pegs, each rotation of the beam needs to have some type of separator between the layers of yarn to keep them from moving too much and, thus, losing the appropriate tension during the weaving process. With these pegs, the yarn on my beam can’t move out of those 2″ sections, so I don’t need a separator (which is often thick paper or thin slats of wood) between the layers. Instead, I wind my warp in 2″ sections on a warping square (or warping board/mill if you have a plain back beam) and then put them straight onto the beam. This is my first project using the Sawyer Bee Warping Square and I love it. Because of my lacking dexterity, I can really only wind one strand of yarn at a time and can’t always hold onto the thinner yarn very well. The warping square is immensely helpful for me.

Each strand of yarn is wound onto the square in a specific pattern to make sure you get each end the right length. The repetition is repeated until you have the right number of ends to fill the 2″ section on the beam. So, 18 ends per inch in two inches means I would wind 36 ends on the warping square before transferring it to the back beam.

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As you wind the yarn onto the square, you create what weavers call “the cross”. Now, not all weavers need a cross, and I think those weavers are also delving into witchcraft. The cross is how you keep the threads in order for threading into the heddles on the loom. That’s jumping ahead a bit, and I promise to show that part in the next blog so it will make more sense.

Basically, you wind one thread so it goes over the peg on the left and under the peg on the right. On the next rotation, you wind the yarn under the left peg and over the right, so they form a cross-section in the middle. For me, this is extremely important. It’s also further proof I am NOT a witch or magical in any way for anyone that has ever wondered.

After the warp is completely wound on the square, it is transferred to the beam.

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Each 2″ warp is placed into the corresponding 2″ section on the beam and then I simply tape it down with a little painter’s tape to hold in place so it doesn’t flop around while I put the next section of warp onto the beam.

This week I will begin threading the heddles with the individual threads! I’m excited to continue with this project. It is a very simple design, but I came up with it after watching Jane Stafford’s online guild episode that went over designing with the Fibonacci Sequence. I’ve realized I am much more drawn to color in design than fancy patterns, so I wanted to go back to some basics and try my hand at better color design for awhile.

Stay tuned; stay healthy!